November 18, 2013

A day with Elaine from SilverDell Books at West End Primary Ormskirk and Willows Primary Kirkham

On Tuesday morning we caught a taxi from the hotel to West End Primary in Ormskirk.  It’s great to see so much of the countryside and the drive across a raised road with fields either side was very pretty.  We saw a pheasant too.  West End is a small village school.  We were joined by students from another local school just around the corner called Asmall Primary.  Ormskirk has a university which I believe specialised for many years in teacher training.  I think there must have been a group of student teachers in my session but I never got to find out exactly who they were. 

I’d really been looking forward to seeing Elaine from SilverDell Books again.  We worked with her in February and she is fabulous.  Her events are legendary and she’s about to host an event for Sir Alex Ferguson this coming Thursday. 

We headed to the shop for a bite of lunch and an ice cream (the shop has an ice cream parlour and Elaine makes the most delicious home made ice creams).  I had fudge – yum!  The next school, Willows Primary was just down the road.  The children were very enthusiastic too.  I really enjoyed their lively responses and the children I selected for the drama were fab.  We had a role reversal with one of the girls, Stevie playing Floyd Sparks and one of the boys, Joe (I think that was his name – please accept my apologies if I have that wrong) playing Clementine.  The children roared laughing and the actors did the most wonderful job.

Elaine kindly drove us back to the hotel via the station, where Jasmine left us to return to London.  We were staying at the Preston Marriott.  Elaine had time for a coffee and we started to plan a much bigger tour of the North West for next year. 

The Fijian Rugby League team were staying at the hotel too.  The team was heading out while Ian and I were having dinner – we marvelled at their lack of clothing with some in shorts and t-shirts and thongs (which I know gets lost in translation here!  I mean flip flops but in Australia flip flops are called thongs).  When we were telling Charlotte about them the next day she fell about laughing – I soon realised my mistake :).